What I Saw on my Winter Vacation

I just returned from a trip to Florida. We drove through Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and north Florida. Along the way we saw a lot of billboards. We watched local TV stations at night when we stayed in motels.

In Wisconsin and Illinois the billboards and TV commercials were pretty much the same as in Minnesota. But when we got into the Southern states, things started to change. There were a lot of billboards for porn shops, strip clubs, gun stores, Jesus, divorce lawyers and personal injury lawyers (ambulance chasers). There seemed to be a porn shop, strip club or gun shop every 20 miles or so along the freeway in the South. They don't outnumber the churches, but they're advertised a lot more.

Where we stayed in Cocoa Beach there was a "gentleman's club" called Cheaters across the street from a Catholic grade school. How do Florida parents explain to their children that the men who go there aren't cheating on their tests?

We have these things in the North. Porn shops and strip joints are usually buried the seedier areas of town. We have divorce lawyers and ambulance chasers, but they advertise on low-rent cable channels or late at night.

During prime time in Minnesota every other TV commercial is for cars. In the South, every other commercial is for personal injury lawyers. (No wonder Republicans are constantly yapping about tort reform -- they're constantly suing each other for car accidents.)

Now this seems counter-intuitive. The South is where Christianity is strongest. People are constantly yapping about God, and pushing their religion in everyday life (cashiers constantly order God to bless their customers). Conservative Republicans have a total lock on state governments in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. They're always bitching the moral collapse of society, as evidenced by pornography, divorce, frivolous personal injury lawsuits and so on.

But based on the prevalence of vice in these states, they do seem to be more morally bankrupt than the "godless" Yankees.

The statistics bear this out: the South has more violent crime -- with only a quarter of the population, the South has 41% of the violent crime. The divorce rate is higher in the South. Even per-capita traffic death rates are higher in conservative states (partly because population density is lower and people drive further).

The question is, why? Do Southerners want more guns because there's more violent crime, or do they want guns because Southerners are more prone to violent crime? Are Southerners drawn to religion because of moral decay represented by high divorce rates, strip clubs and pornography, or this moral decay due to the hypocrisy inherent in a conservative religion that promotes the objectification and denigration of women?

Frequently, one of the best ways to get kids to do something is for their parents to tell them not to do it. Based on the outcomes, conservative Christianity seems to be the worst nagging parent ever...